As the world of technology changes, the world of content marketing and search engine optimization (SEO) changes right along with it. A perfect example? Voice search, which, according to a recent study from analysts at Stone Temple, a cutting-edge data source for digital marketing research, will soon be just as common as people using standard touch inputs to conduct their searches.
To help you make sure your business is ready for the changes brought about by voice search, we have compiled the latest data available, analyzed emerging trends, and covered all the essential data points; in this article you’ll find a comprehensive look at how the growing rise of voice search will impact your business and potentially change the way you optimize your campaigns or change how you reach your target audience. First, we’ll go over some of the most recent trends in this area, then we’ll look at the important elements that go into voice search. Finally, we’ll show you some basic tips on optimizing your own pages for voice search content.
The Numbers
The first and most important takeaway from Stone Temple’s survey, which was conducted in late 2017: The year-over-year numbers show a significant increase. Of 12 common environments the study covered for voice search usage, 10 showed an increase from 2017 to 2018 – only “home alone” and “at home with friends” categories showed minor drops. Areas like “at the gym,” “on public transportation” and “in a restaurant with acquaintances” saw major leaps.
This is interesting, because it reveals that despite other data suggesting people can become annoyed when hearing others use voice commands, it’s clear that such public usage is becoming more and more common. Over 60 percent of study participants said they enjoy the fast, hassle-free nature of voice searches, with two-thirds of all respondents claiming that voice search makes using their smartphone easier. It appears that this convenience will outweigh any minor annoyances people find in terms of public voice searches.
Voice Search Summary Details
In this section, we’ll go over some of the basics on how voice search actually works. The primary area to consider here is the summary, which will be presented to the user after they speak their search terms.
There are four elements that make up voice search summaries, according to an announcement from Google Assistant. Experts in the field assume there are actually more elements than these, but these are the prominent areas that correspond to algorithms. They include:
- Length: Voice searches provide a summary of the appropriate content that’s spoken
- Correct grammar: Well-formed sentences that make sense
- User satisfaction: Information meets the user’s needs
- Elocution: The importance of good pronunciation
When a voice search algorithm kicks in, what it’s doing is “translating” words into a format of ones and zeros that can be read by machine learning programs. From here, the system removes certain words or phrases that it doesn’t require to create a search summary, a process called compression. There are several different kinds of compression algorithms out there, and Google’s voice search summarizer is one of them. Words or phrases that are commonly removed from voice searches to get a good summary include:
- Appositions: Words or phrases that have a direct relationship to each other, where one or the other is not needed in the search
- Optional modifiers: Elements of grammar that modify nouns or verbs
- Temporal expressions: Phrases that relate to time – a point in time, a frequency or a duration of time
- Introductory clauses: Phrases that set up a statement
Interestingly, researchers who combined this method with actual grammatical and part-of-speech features found that this did not improve the performance of the algorithm.
Now, there are situations where a voice search will not yield a legitimate summary. Per Google Assistant, there are four major features that make it tough for voice searches to summarize results:
- Too many commas: To avoid this while searching, users should prioritize reading their search aloud and ensuring it makes sense.
- Quotes: The algorithm appears to struggle with quotes, though this could be mitigated to some degree by making such sentences shorter and clearer.
- Nothing to remove: As we noted, voice searches naturally remove words to make the summary simpler. If there are no words to remove, the algorithm can sometimes be confused.
- Important context: When the algorithm struggles to contextualize events or happenings.
How to Optimize Voice Search Content
Here are some important tips on optimizing content for Google Assistant and other voice searches:
- Structured data: Google employees have been vocal about encouraging online marketers to use structured data in their websites. New features are being infused into Google that will make this highly advantageous, including making content more applicable to Voice Assistant. Whatever you can to do help communicate exactly what the page is meant to be about is helpful.
- Easy content to read: It may sound simple, but one of the largest individual factors in successfully optimized voice search content is the ease of reading that content. This was already important within the SEO world, but it’s even more vital now that voice searches are more common. In many cases, it’s best to give a direct answer to a common question area related to your business – and to make it extremely clear that this bit of content is meant to be an answer to this question. Some voice assistants are drawn to these kinds of direct answers.
- Voice snippets: If it’s possible to combine information into a voice snippet, this can be useful in some areas.
- Organization: In addition, you can consider the way your content is organized – large tables might not work with Voice Assistant, and big pages full of links can be much the same. With tables, it can be helpful to simply discuss their content in sentences while using the table as a corresponding visual aid.
- Write naturally: In general, if content is written naturally and in clear, consistent language, it will have success with voice searches.
- Don’t overdo it: While these areas are all very important, it’s important not to go too far. Turning your entire site into single-paragraph pages just to target voice search won’t help your SEO overall. This will lead to pages having very low value due to their small amounts of information, and these pages will lose all kinds of other non-voice search traffic.
While voice search is a relatively new technology and it is just beginning to gain search market share, the experts agree that the proliferation of voice-enabled devices and voice operated digital assistants, making sure your website and content strategy is ready and optimized for voice search will continue to be increasingly important for business owners.